Taxidermy is a word of Greek origin that means “arrangement of the skin.” It is the art of preparing animals for display in museums and scientific collections. Over the course of my 40-year career, I have prepared thousands of animals. That includes 10,000 specimens for the Zoology Museum at the University of São Paulo (MZ-USP), as well as at least 4,000 for the Brazilian National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA). I work at the Taxidermy Laboratory in the Department of Animal Biology of the Biology Institute at the University of Campinas (IB-UNICAMP) and I have lost count of how many vertebrates I have prepared for the institution. I prepared many animals for scientific and educational collections at the Museum of Biological Diversity (MDBio), for research by master’s and doctoral students, and for numerous field studies.
I joined UNICAMP in 1982 at the age of 16 to work as a messenger for the Biology Institute’s secretary. My role was to distribute correspondence between teachers and help organize documents. As I walked through the department’s corridors, I was fascinated by the animals from all over Brazil that were displayed in glass cabinets. In my two years as a messenger, I saw several taxidermied animals for the first time that I had not even known existed.
One day, I went to take a letter to the person in charge of the Taxidermy Laboratory. I had never seen anyone going in there and I was curious. I knocked on the door and Antonio Corrêa Filho, the Biology Institute’s first taxidermist, invited me in. He was sitting at the counter, working on a green-headed tanager [Tangara seledon]. I was in awe. I had never seen anyone doing taxidermy and I had never seen that species of bird. As soon as I laid eyes on the animal, I remember wondering how it was possible to remove all of its skin without the feathers falling out. The question got stuck in my head and I asked Antonio if I could come back the next day during my lunch break.
That is how I started frequenting the laboratory and watching him work. A few months later, Antonio retired and a new taxidermist took over the laboratory: Otávio Cardozo de Oliveira, who until then had been the driver for the director of the Biology Institute and had been trained by Antonio to replace him. Otávio, however, was also close to retirement and had to start thinking about a successor. I asked him to teach me the craft, and he agreed.
At the same time, Pierre Montouchet became head of the Zoology Department and I decided to request a transfer to its Taxidermy Laboratory. He was surprised because while everyone else was running away from that laboratory, I wanted to go there. After a few weeks, I was in the secretary’s office and Professor Montouchet appeared. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “stay here until lunchtime, and then you’re free to go to taxidermy.” That same day, I started working with Otávio. In 1989, when he retired, I took over the lab.
Taxidermy is a process that can be done with any vertebrate animal, but I most often work with birds and mammals. When a teacher, researcher, or student brings an animal to the laboratory, I ask them its purpose. For museum exhibitions, they are artistic, for use in the classroom, they are didactic, and when I prepare animals to form collections that will be studied by researchers, they are scientific.
For artistic jobs, the first step is to place the animal on the workbench and make a longitudinal cut from the genitalia to the tip of the nose, so that the skin can be detached from the muscles. I very carefully remove the skin as if it were a piece of clothing, and then I separate the body from the head. Next, I make a plaster mold cast on a wire structure that will support the finished piece. Then I apply a preservative solution to the skin and attach the head mold. I use other wire structures to serve as the skeleton, then fill the skin with straw, and sew it all together. I also position the animal in a specific pose and set it on a wooden base. The challenge is to make the piece as similar as possible to the animal’s real morphology and natural posture, imitating its real-life gestures. The final part of the process is to insert glass eyes and inject formaldehyde.
For animals to be used in scientific collections, the process is more methodical. Before handling the animal, I record its biometrics, including the sex, origin, weight, dimensions, and name of the person who collected it and when. I use this data to label the animal. Then, I follow the same procedure used for artistic pieces, except for the pose. Usually, animals in scientific collections are not attached to a base. In both cases I am guided by my memory, which is photographic.
Léo Ramos Chaves/ Revista Pesquisa FAPESPTaxidermied animals prepared by BalduínoLéo Ramos Chaves/ Revista Pesquisa FAPESP
In the year 2000, a student who had done his master’s degree at UNICAMP and was studying a PhD at USP came to my lab. I had prepared animals for him during his master’s degree and he told me that his PhD was being held up because he couldn’t find a taxidermist to prepare six blue manakins [Chiroxiphia caudata] collected as part of his research. I asked to see the birds, which were frozen and very well preserved. I told him I would do the work and delivered everything in 15 days.
Weeks later, the same student told me about a USP project surveying fauna in the Amazon that was looking for a taxidermist for its field research. He referred me to the project coordinator. I had never been involved in such a large-scale study. I have since been invited on more than 20 trips, which has given me the opportunity to work more closely with researchers and improve my skills at preparing animals for scientific studies. On these occasions, I often work on animals while surrounded by researchers who have never seen a taxidermist in action.
Over time I developed an interest in studying biology, so in 2007 I decided to apply to do a degree at Nossa Senhora do Patrocínio University Center in Itu, São Paulo. It had been so many years since I had studied anything that I thought it would be impossible to complete my degree. My aim was to end the first year with a failure in just one subject at the most. If I failed more than one, I would drop out of the course. To my surprise, I passed every subject in the first year and in every other year. During my undergraduate studies, I met a professor who supported me and invited me to teach taxidermy at the college, since there are so few qualified professionals in the field in Brazil.
Between 2010 and 2016, on the last research trips I made around Brazil, so many animals were collected that I did not have time to prepare them in the field. I started bringing them home to work on there, and Bárbara, my youngest daughter who is now 27 years old, began watching and growing increasingly interested. She started accompanying me on field trips. During one of them, I had to leave early and Bárbara stayed to support the researchers. I am 59 years old and will retire in 2024, but I do not intend to stop completely. But I need someone qualified to replace me and my daughter is the leading candidate to take on the role.
Returning to the question I asked the first time I entered the Taxidermy Laboratory: why don’t the bird feathers fall out? Actually, the feathers can fall out, especially during fieldwork when we collect a wide variety of animals, from hawks to hummingbirds. At this stage, you need to be delicate and careful, and you need to know how to work with skins of different textures and resistances; some are thicker and others more oily, each requiring specific techniques. Otherwise, all the work that went into collecting the animal could be lost.
I like to think that more people will be able to see and study taxidermied animals. Unfortunately, some animals will no longer exist in the wild within a few years. When I am immersed in the taxidermy process, I feel happy. And I feel even more satisfied when I finish and look at the animal, observing the beauty in its details. I feel like my work can bring an animal back to life, almost as if it becomes eternal.
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